Chili update... Debbie's chili finally finished, was up to her usual chili standards, and we each had a gigantic bowl of it. She made it in the ginormous pot I bought for just over a year ago – it's a 24 quart monster, big enough to cook for a couple of small armies simultaneously. What was left over after our meal filled 10 containers, each 2 quarts. Fortunately for us, the chili freezes well, and keeps more or less forever, so now we have ready-made meals for quite a while :)

Progress report... The home network is now all installed in its proper location and all working as I planned. Yay! I did start on the barn network, as planned, but got sidetracked with another IT project: I brought our Mac Mini server up. It was suffering from a year of neglect, as I'd left it in San Diego for the whole year I was up here in Utah getting the house remodeled. It was two versions back on the operating system, had dozens of urgently needed updates, and was now located on a different network address. It took me a couple hours to get all that stuff fixed up, but now our little server is back on the air.

Today I'll finish getting the barn network configured. It's “labbed” on my desktop right now. When I've finished configuring it, I should be able to walk it over to the barn, plug it in, and be ready to go. Well, actually, there's one other little detail that needs to get done: I have to route an Ethernet cable from the second floor office in our house to the basement where the underground cable from the barn terminates. That will involve crawling around in the attic, working on a ladder in the basement, and exercising the swearing skills I learned in six years in the Navy :)

Mo'i update... When we took Mo'i to see the vet on Friday, she couldn't find anything obviously wrong (other than the facial tumor we already knew about). She took some blood and we ordered a “senior panel” to make sure his kidneys are working all right. She also suggested that perhaps the problem was simply that Mo'i had gotten into the habit of drinking a lot of water. We've always had unlimited water available for our animals, so if he's picked up this habit it's something new. But ... the past couple of days, we've been restricting his water intake (especially at night), and ... we aren't seeing the problem any more.

It sure would be nice if that's the cause of his excess urination. We should have the results of the senior panel on Wednesday...